Upcoming Speaking Engagements

I’ll be in Saint Louis, MO in mid-July to speak at the local Ruby and JavaScript user groups.

St. Louis Ruby User Group
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 @ 6:30pm
The Able Few LLC (2603 Cherokee Street, Saint Louis, MO)TDD/BDD with RSpec and Cucumber
RSpec and Cucumber are the bread and butter of Ruby development. Learn how to write Cucumber features to drive out high level system behaviour. Then jump down into RSpec specifications to test-drive out the actual implementation of the system. See how outside-in development can improve your code and keep you focused on the problem at hand.

St. Louis JavaScript Meetup
Thursday, July 19, 2012 @ 6:30pm
The Able Few LLC (2603 Cherokee Street, Saint Louis, MO)Testable JavaScript
Your client-side JavaScript is code as worthy of testing as any server-side code that you might write, but often JavaScript testing is ignored. This session will introduce you to QUnit and Jasmine, two popular JavaScript testing frameworks. Come see how you can easily incorporate TDD/BDD techniques into your web development stack and increase your confidence that your JavaScript code is as robust as your server-side code.

In mid-August, I’ll be speaking at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, WI. That Conference, which is being organized by Scott Seely and cohorts, is shaping up to be a lot of fun and has a fantastic line-up of speakers. I must admit that talking about That Conference with friends causes a lot of confusion. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Friend:

Which conference are you speaking at?

Me:

That Conference.

Friend:

Which conference?

Me:

That Conference.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

That Conference
August 13th – 15th, 2012
Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells, WIASP.NET MVC/Ruby on Rails Death Match
In this corner, our first contender, weighing in at 35 kLOC of C#, we have ASP.NET MVC. In the other corner, weighing in at 168 kLOC of Ruby, we have Ruby on Rails. We’re going to see what it takes to build a web app – test-first – in both frameworks. We’ll compare and contrast their relative strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to give a balanced perspective on these two popular frameworks.

In late August, I’ll be giving a number of Ruby-focused talks at devLINK in Chattanooga, TN. My friend and fellow vegan developer, Alan Stevens, has been bugging me for years to come speak at devLINK and I’m finally going. Very excited!

devLINK
August 29 – 31, 2012
Chattanooga Convention Center, Chattanooga, TNGetting Started with Ruby on Rails
In this session, get a gentle introduction to the Ruby language and how to get started with your first Rails app.Ruby without Rails
Ruby is about more than just Rails and web development. Ruby is a fascinating and powerful language that will put a smile on your face with its elegance. Come learn some Ruby.ASP.NET MVC/Ruby on Rails Death Match
In this corner, our first contender, weighing in at 35 kLOC of C#, we have ASP.NET MVC. In the other corner, weighing in at 168 kLOC of Ruby, we have Ruby on Rails. We’re going to see what it takes to build a web app – test-first – in both frameworks. We’ll compare and contrast their relative strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to give a balanced perspective on these two popular frameworks.

If you’re at one of these events, don’t be a stranger! Come over and say hi. I’d love to see you there.

About James Kovacs

James Kovacs is a Technical Evangelist for JetBrains. He is passionate in sharing his knowledge about OO, SOLID, TDD/BDD, testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques.
He blogs on CodeBetter.com as well as his own blog, is a technical contributor for Pluralsight, writes articles for MSDN Magazine and CoDe Magazine, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups. He is the creator of psake, a PowerShell-based build automation tool, intended to save developers from XML Hell.
James is the Ruby Track Chair for DevTeach, one of Canada’s largest independent developer conferences. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Toronto and his Masters degree from Harvard University.